


Morning Person

by mapleraindrops



Category: BoJack Horseman
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Feels, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Underage Drinking, teenage bojack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24549979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapleraindrops/pseuds/mapleraindrops
Summary: He's been waking up at the crack of dawn for as long as he can remember. He's not sure why.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	Morning Person

Bojack was a morning person. He didn’t want to be, but he was. Morning people wore bluetooth earpieces and carried around thermoses full of coffee as they went to their jobs in downtown. They ate balanced breakfasts and went to the gym and were productive. He didn't do any of those things. He didn't even like coffee if there were no Bailey's mixed in. And yet, he would always wake up early. No matter what he did. He would drink for hours before bed and take whatever drugs he could to make himself pass out for hours but still, he would always wake up before sunrise and in somewhere as sunny as California, that meant before six AM, and not even the most expensive blackout curtains in the world would stop it.

He didn’t know why. He had no obligation to. He had no job, not really. Thirteen years after that stupid sitcom that consumed his twenties ended, and he was still living off the millions that show gave him. 

Maybe it was instinct from when he was a teenager. The earlier he woke up, the earlier he could leave the house and avoid his parent’s daily arguing. If he was lucky he would be able to leave the house before his parents ever woke up. But nothing was open at 6 in the morning, so he would just wait at the park outside his neighborhood until the bus came. Sometimes he would just walk the four miles to school. Whatever kept him out of the house. He joined extracurriculars. Anything for an excuse to stay at school. In high school, he discovered performing arts and realizes he wasn’t half bad at theater. 

“Mom?” he had asked one morning, holding a playbill close to his chest as he crept into the kitchen. “I wanted to know if you wanted to come see our show this Saturday.”

“A show?” she responded, pushing a wooden spoon around a pan filled with what looked like scrambled eggs. “Since when are you in a show?”

“I’ve been going to rehearsals every day for the past few months. Did.. you not notice I was gone?”

His mother sighed and turned to him. “Bojack, do you want the real answer to that, or the answer that will make you think I actually care about you and whatever you do all day?"

He doesn't respond and hands her the playbill, which she snatches from him. " _The Wizard of Oz_. Hm. I never cared for theater." She opened the playbill and laughed out loud. "You're playing The Cowardly Lion? How fitting."

(Maybe it was fitting, he thinks. Maybe he was cowardly. But he was the only freshman to get a lead role and somehow that meant something to him. Was he stupid to let it mean something to him?)

"Well, are you coming? We open this weekend. Tickets are 3 dollars." 

She hands the playbill back to him. "Maybe," she mutters, and shifts her attention back to burning scrambled eggs. "Now go tell your father breakfast is ready."

He did, and when the eggs are burned it's somehow Bojack's fault. Butterscotch makes him eat the charred eggs, claiming it's perfectly good food and one day when he's on the streets he'll miss it and regret not eating something when he had the chance. He chokes down tears as he forces down the eggs, by now having learned it was easier and far less painful to just listen when his father tells him to do something.

They don't come to the show, of course, and as he takes his final bow right before Dorothy does, he kicks himself for even thinking his stupid parents would show. Even today, the haunting chorus of Somewhere Over the Rainbow reminds him of the stench of cigarettes and burned breakfast.

When he wasn't doing theater, he did any sport he could get his hands on. Sports had practices that started early in the morning and ended late at night. He starts with track his freshman year, inspired by the posters of Secretariat that decorated his walls, and he excels at it. Somehow he catches the eye of the football coach and by sophomore year, he's on varsity football. As it turned out, he had lots of practice running and ducking from people, and this way no one would question the bruises up and down his arms on the rare occasion he wore short sleeves. 

(He doesn't bother inviting his parents to the games. He knows better than that by now.)

The first football season opens a new realm for him. He would win games, and that made him popular with the older kids on the team. Popularity led to parties, and parties had alcohol. Lots of it. And as it turned out, the shy cowardly persona would melt away as soon as he got a little tipsy. He was loud and funny and the life of the party and people liked him and laughed at his jokes as he stood on top of tables and made fun of everyone in the room. _That was it,_ he thinks to himself. That was where he learned to crave validation. When he joked, people liked him. So that's what he did. He made jokes, more often than not at the expense of other people. And yeah it gave him the reputation of an asshole, but he was an asshole who won football games so he was the kind of asshole people liked. 

And when he's at school, he forgets his parents. Who needs a parent's love when every time he would do something on the field, the crowd would explode and cheerleaders in short skirts would scream his name? He would go to parties and tell jokes and as long as he was a little (okay, a lot) drunk, people would laugh at them and they would _love_ him. 

When he was drunk or hiding behind a huge football helmet people liked him. So he started getting drunk more. Who cared that he was getting blackout drunk on weekdays? Who cared that he was corroding his liver and esophagus from throwing up every night? Who cared that his parents didn't love him? He barely saw them anyways. And who cared that he had no real friends? People _liked_ him. They loved him. And he wasn't about to give that up so soon. 

And it didn't matter that by senior year he was so drunk and high on whatever combination of drugs and alcohol the boys in the locker room could find that the whole year flies by and he barely passes his classes and doesn't apply to any colleges, even though several of them were willing to give him full scholarships and a place on their football field. It doesn't matter because he's Bojack Horseman, and he doesn't need college. He's a star football player (or at least he was, until the cigarettes messed up his lungs so much he could barely get around the track without wheezing). He's gotten a lead in the school play since freshman year (or he did until he started showing up to rehearsals late, and they gave his role of George Gibbs from _Our Town_ to Michael Martin) . He's the guy everybody likes (or he was, until he got really drunk at Steph Bullhorn's end of the season party and called Alexandra Ritchie something that made her run out and cry. To this day he has no idea what he said).

 _He's also an alcoholic_ , a voice whispers to him. It's one he pushes down because he's not an alcoholic. Every kid in high school drinks. He could stop at any moment. _So why don't you?_ The voice nags. He ignores it again and the second he graduates high school, takes the beat up car his father hadn't touched in years and he drives to LA because damn it, he's going to be famous. 

He's not, of course. Not at the start. He gets a shitty job working at a shitty coffee shop that opened at the asscrack of dawn and with shitty LA traffic, it meant Bojack had to wake up at the asscrack of dawn to be able to open up the place. Another reason he's used to waking up that early, he realizes. But he's happy. He's away from his parents, and LA is a fresh start for him. And that meant no more alcohol (and it was definitely because he cared about his health and not because he was underage and it was somehow harder to get alcohol as an adult than as a teenager. It definitely wasn't because of that). He was going to be sober now, whether he liked it or not (except for cigarettes. Those don't count).

The rest of his time was consumed by hopping from bar to bar, doing stand-up wherever he can. He quickly realizes that without alcohol, he's just not funny (or maybe high schoolers and actual LA people have different standards of comedy. But it's probably just the alcohol thing. Yeah, it's the alcohol thing. It's the alcohol's fault). He meets Herb, and that opens up a new chapter of his life for him. In more ways than one. 

Through Herb he meets Charlotte, and she's young just like he was and she smokes her first cigarette with him. He could have fallen in love with her if he'd let himself, but besides a few stolen kisses when Herb's not looking it never amounts to anything. She leaves for Maine, and he doesn't stop her. Why doesn't he stop her? He lets her leave, and soon she's just another fantasy, swirling around his head alongside thoughts of houses on the lake and hardware stores and daughters named Harper.

A year later and he's on Horsin' Around. The filming days are long and excruciating, and he needs to be in the makeup chair by seven in the morning which means waking up early to get to set on time. But people laugh at his jokes, and it's a high he hasn't felt it so long he doesn't even complain about it. For now, at least (and it doesn't matter that he didn't write the jokes. It doesn't bother him at all that they're not really laughing at him. It doesn't bother him at all). Somewhere during that time, during a blend of cigarettes and Cindy Crawfish and Sharona and Sarah Lynn and conversations with his mother, he starts drinking again. It's not bad, he tells himself. It's just to loosen some nerves. The audience finds him funnier when he's tipsy, just like they did in high school. It's not hurting anyone (except maybe his liver) and it's not like anyone's catching him. He's smart about it. He hides it. No one's going to find out. 

But somewhere along the third season, he gets sloppy. He stops transferring his vodka into clear water bottles and his beer into cartons of apple juice. He remembers Herb's face when he catches him for the first time.

"Bojack," he says. "Are you insane?" His voice is a whisper, so no one else hears it, but it cuts Bojack in a way he didn't know was possible. It drips with anger and spite and genuine worry and it reminds him of his football coach junior year. "Son," he had said, putting a hand on his shoulder, and no one had called Bojack that in so long it almost made him cry. "You gotta sober up if you wanna stay on the team. If you're not gonna do it for yourself, do it for your teammates. Don't ruin this for them." 

It's so different and yet so similar to the way Herb says to him that day, "Are you seriously bringing alcohol to a set with _minors?_ Is something wrong with your head?" 

"I'm sorry, Herb-"

Herb rubs his forehead with two fingers. "BJ, stop. Just stop. I don't want to hear whatever excuse you're going to come up with. The kids are in your dressing room all the time. What happens if they find it? You'll be fired. How the hell are they going to do Horsin' Around without the goddamn horse? The show will be cancelled. Don't ruin this for everyone else. Don't ruin this for _me._ You owe me that much at the very least."

Herb turns to leave before Bojack has the chance to say something- which, in hindsight, was probably for the best. He wouldn't have known what to say anyways. 

"And Bojack?" Herb says as he leaves the room, his knuckles white as he grips the handle of the door. "I've sacrificed way too much to make this show a possibility. I can't risk you ruining it. If you're going to be a stupid alcoholic, do it at home." The door slams shut, loud and echoing in the dressing room and in Bojack's mind.

Thinking about that conversation always makes him either want to quit cold-turkey and get sober, or drink to forget about it. It was the first time someone who wasn't himself called him that word. _Alcoholic._ It was the first time he realized maybe he was one.

If Herb notices that Bojack winces after taking a sip of his water, or that Sharona seems a little too protective of her orange juice, or that Bojack slurs ever so slightly at the end of each episode, he doesn't say anything about it. In fact, he doesn't say much of anything at all to Bojack, other than general director notes. Their friendship is strained and Bojack means to fix it. He really does. But he loses that chance. 

It doesn’t get better when Herb leaves the show. Bojack drinks more. It's impossible that none of the cast or crew noticed. But Herb's leaving took a major toll on the show. They can't handle Bojack getting fired too. So they ignore it. His days are consumed with alcohol, amber liquid that used to sting going down, but now he doesn’t even taste. Mounds of white powder and pills that he couldn’t even pronounce. He’s high all the time, and it feels like he’s floating. There are episodes of Horsin’ Around that he doesn’t even remember filming, episodes that he would rewatch that seemed brand new. Getting drunk on whatever in the bathroom of his dressing room, the cabinet under the sink filled with alcohol for drinking and not the alcohol meant to be used to clean sinks, and he thinks on more than one occasion if anyone would care if he switched them. He would stink up the whole set with the stench of cigarettes, a taste foul and yet nostalgic at the same time. Maybe that’s why he smoked, he realizes. Not for the buzz, but for the feeling of home.

He'd be so high he'd be awake for days at a time. It was like time travel. He would black out and when he would come to, it would be days later. It was then, he thinks. During the later years of the show. That he accepts it. He was an alcoholic. He knew it, and everyone knew it. How could they not, when he always smelled like scotch and vodka? He didn't really care, though. He didn't care that Sarah Lynn was inhaling just as much secondhand smoke as he had growing up, if not more considering how suffocating the set was. He didn't care that Sharona lost her job. He didn't care that Sarah Lynn got drunk for the first time and it was all his fault. He didn't care that he would get nosebleeds every other day from all the stuff he was putting up there. And he certainly didn't care about Herb. 

Or so he told himself. 

That was when he discovered tranquilizers. During the off seasons and hiatuses he would load up and sleep till noon. As stupid and depressing it was, the more he slept the less he was able to think about everything that had happened. And then of course his stupid body got used to it and he was back to waking up at the asscrack of dawn. 

Just like he was now.

He looked at the blinking digital clock on the table next to him that boasted the time and date. 

_05:34 - July 12, 2009_

He looked at Princess Carolyn, lying next to him fast asleep. Her alarm wasn't set to ring for another hour. And then she would wake up and eat a balanced breakfast and wear her bluetooth headpiece and go downtown with her thermos full of coffee (that was never spiked) to her job as an agent and talk to her clients, one of which was him. Because for some reason she loves him too much to give up on him even though the last thing he's worked on was thirteen years ago (because he refuses to acknowledge that The Bojack Horseman Show ever existed).

He stares at her, for a bit. She's so small. He never really realized how small she was but she was curled up in a ball, her back pressed to his chest, she looked so peaceful, and Bojack stares at her with love in his heart that he didn't know he could feel. He sits up, and she flops over slightly and doesn't move. He panics, slightly, and presses his hand to her back, and her chest and feels all over for a pulse. She stirs slightly. "Bojack?" she yawns. "What happened? What time is it? What were you doing?"

"Just go back to sleep," he says and she obliges, rolling over to the other side of the bed and he already misses her warmth. What _was_ he doing? How was he supposed to tell her he was making sure she was still breathing? That she was still alive?

It was a habit he'd picked up when he was young, maybe three or four. When his parents wouldn't wake up after a long party or a long argument, something in his little toddler body would alert him to go and check on them. He learned to check for breathing at a young age, and also learned how to check for a pulse, too. 

Maybe that's why he wakes up so early, he thinks. Maybe that's where the intuition comes from. He would wake up early when he knew something was wrong. And when something in his life was _always_ wrong, well, just take a wild guess. As the sun finally starts to peek between the crack of his blackout curtains he gets up instead of just laying in bed till noon like he always does. Maybe he'll do something nice for Princess Carolyn for a change. Lord knows she's done enough for him. 

He tries to make pancakes for her, but they're out of the premade mix and he knows he'll screw something up if he tries to make it from scratch. Does he even own measuring cups? He tries to make an omelette, but he flips it too soon and soon enough he's making scrambled eggs instead. While figuring out how to work the coffee machine he burns the eggs. He eats them anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i think i just wanted an excuse to write about teenage bojack because it's something the show never really gives us. but yeah, theater kid bojack will always be canon in my heart.


End file.
